Drop in tracked GA4, Ads, Socials conversions since August

Technical Q&A
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Topic summary

A Shopify store owner reports a sudden 40-80% drop in tracked conversions across GA4, Google Ads, Meta, and other channels starting August 1st. This issue affects multiple Shopify sites using various integration methods, including server-side tagging with subdomains and customer events datalayers.

Key details:

  • No changes were made to GTM, external tools, or website backend before the drop
  • Cookiebot consent management is loaded via GTM
  • Consent denial rates don’t explain the magnitude of missing data
  • The customer events implementation follows Shopify’s official GTM tutorial and previously worked well for months

Proposed solutions:

  1. Switch to a universal datalayer and centralize tracking through GTM
  2. Configure cookie banner manually outside GTM
  3. Ensure proper server-side tracking with first-party domain/subdomain
  4. Consider using Stape.io’s datalayer implementation

The responder suggests the current datalayer may be incompatible despite previous success, though the root cause remains unidentified. The issue appears widespread across multiple accounts, suggesting a potential platform-level change rather than site-specific configuration problems.

Summarized with AI on October 25. AI used: claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929.
1

Since August 1 we see a sudden 40 - 80% drop in tracked conversions within GA4, Google Ads, Meta and other channels. This is across several Shopify sites regardless of the type of integrations. Via Server Side Tagging or all datalayers added in customer events.
We mostly use Cookiebot and all was well in the weeks and months before. Nothing has been changed in GTM or external tools. Website backend hasn’t been changed either.

Has anyone experienced something similar or know what the cause may be with a possible solution?

2

HI siteID,

Thanks for your query.

Could you please share which Datalayer you’re using in Custom pixel to push datalayer events?

Did you confiugre first party domain/subdomain using custom loader?

It happens if there are multiple of datalayer event like from Google and youtube app and custom pixel event.

TO solve this issue:

  1. Use a universal Datalayer and configure all tracking through GTM
  2. Configure cookie banner manually not using GTM(recommended by CMP for shopify)
  3. configure server side tracking with first party domain/subdomain
  4. use proper datalayer. i suggest using stape.io app for datalayer.

Feel free to ask if you have any questions.

Thanks

3

@J_mah Thanks for your reply.
Basically the customer events are the same or similar as what’s been written in this article: https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/promoting-marketing/pixels/custom-pixels/gtm-tutorial

We have server side tagging with a subdomain.
Google and YouTube, Facebook and such are not active.
We also use Cookiebot which is loaded via GTM.

Basically it all worked great for months and without notice it just dropped since the start of August.

Customers haven’t changed anything in the website, GTM is still active and unchanged, same with customer events. There hasn’t been an increase or decrease in consent status.

4

This Datalayer is not very effective from my experience. many of my clients had issue with that.

As far your statements everything seems perfect. Yet i can not comment with bare eyes.

Need to inspect everything related to tracking.

Here is the datalayer i use to track. working fine for all.

Shopify purchase datalayer
Shopify purchase datalayer2285×1189 201 KB

5

The datalayer we use is similar. It worked well in the months before August 1st and it is still working. Though it’s not working as it should be. There’s still a big difference which varies from 40 - 80% of missing purchases in GA4 and other platforms. Consent denied does not have such a high rate.

Not sure whether the problem lies with the customer events or whether it’s data distribution from GTM onwards or something else.

We’ve used the customer events datalayer from several SST companies, similar to Stape.
The drop in data is something we see in multiple accounts.

Below a partial screenshot of the customer events.

image
image666×527 22.8 KB

6

Then you would need to configure another datalayer that is compatible with your website. Sometimes this datalayer does not work in many cases.

I would like to recommend you to install stape.io and enable the datalayer.